Re: Wasting our Freedom

[Bodo Eggert]

Paul de Weerd <weerd@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 03:38:45PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:

> | It's not about lazyness of BSD developers, many people who consider the
> | BSD licence more free than the GPL argue that the advantage of the BSD
> | licence is that it does not require you to give back.
> | 
> | Something is wrong if your licence text clearly states that you do not
> | require getting anything back but you then argue on moral grounds that
> | something has to be given back.
> 
> Something is wrong if your licence text clearly states that you MUST
> give back, but then you don't return the favour on grounds that "hey,
> they don't require it, so we don't have to".

If you may demand me to give back, why should I(*) not demand the same thing
for my contributions?

You're not only asking to contribute to your project, but you're asking me
to throw my code to the feet of Apple amd Microsoft, who will user it, make
big bucks and lock out alternatives as far as possible, especially free ones.
This happens to not be my idea of sharing code.

You may say it's morally correct for them because they never claimed they'd
not suck your blood, but did the GPL people claim not to demand others to
give back? Au contrair, and if it's OK for companies to do what they say
they would, it will be OK for them and for me, too.


*) I did not yet work on a BSD licensed project, but let's asume I did

> It may be perfectly legal, but it's "interesting" to say the least.
> No, you do not have to give back. But weren't you open source / free
> software developers ? Why did you pick the GPL ? Because you didn't
> want someone to run of with your code ? You wanted code to be given
> back ? Why not do it yourself ?

> By not giving back you're giving a strange signal.

Gee, since you're demanding back anyway, you can use the GPL for your
project and use my contribution. Problem solved.

Oh, you want people to be free not to share? Freedom includes having the
moral right to do something. Am I free not to share? Or is this "freedom"
just an empty shell?

-- 
Funny quotes:
36. You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

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